Teaching for Twitter Writing

By: Andrew Pass

The very first time I heard of Twitter I thought it was doomed to failure. Who in the world would ever use a communication tool that was limited to 140 characters? It just was not the way that people wrote. I guess I haven't always been right in my life. Hopefully you will agree that this is not such a bad characteristic.

Though I learned to blog and Tweet over five years ago, I have not been using these tools since I started A Pass Educational Group. Of course, this blog has now been going since the beginning of the year. But, until now, I have not used Facebook or Twitter effectively to market A Pass. This is now changing. This past week I have begun to both update our new Facebook account and Tweet as well.

This leads me to what you will hopefully agree is an interesting question. Should educators be helping students learn Tweeting, Facebook and blogging skills in the classroom? For the purpose of brevity let's focus on a much narrower question -- should teachers be helping students learn to write complicated ideas in 140 characters or less?

Several days ago I Tweeted the following: "I'm writing a paper on value of connecting learning 2 hands on activities connected 2 real world scenarios. Any suggested sources?" Certainly this sentence is not grammatically correct, but I believe it gets the point across in fewer than 140 characters.

I believe that it is essential for students to learn to write in ways that work for their purposes. Some might think that this approach is too radical, that writing is not important in its own right, and rather it is only important insofar as it helps people achieve specific objectives, namely communicate. Within the last decade, patterns of communication have changed. Today people sometimes communicate important ideas within a framework that is constrained by 140 characters.

Educators must prepare students for these new patterns of communication. This means that sometimes it is okay to substitute arabic numbers for words. Sometimes it is actually good to omit articles and spell words without vowels. It's acceptable to do what has to be done to fit ideas into constrained contexts. However, and this is important, students must learn that different types of writing are required for different media.

As a business owner, I would be very unlikely to hire somebody who wrote a cover letter in which the numbers one through nine were written using the arabic numerals. I would expect to see proper articles and punctuation. In short, I would be most likely to respond to a letter that would have been considered appropriate ten years ago. However, a cover letter and Twitter are not the same things. They require different kinds of writing. (Of course, it is possible that these expectations will change in another decade, but for now, let’s focus on our current world.)

Ten years ago, I did not believe that Twitter would gain popularity. Today, this application has gained so much popularity that it has added to the skills that students must learn in school. Today, students must learn to write traditionally and write for new social media. This is no simple task!

Feel free to follow us:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apasseducationalgroupllc

Twitter: @APassEducation

Organized Chaos: A Characteristic of an Awesome Classroom

By: Andrew Pass

The first time I ever heard the term “organized chaos,” I had no idea what it meant. However, it certainly didn’t sound very good, since I focused on the word "chaos."  I thought chaos was a terrible thing and we couldn't possibly want chaos to exist.  In time, I came to recognize the fact that since "organized" was the oxymoron of "chaos," it couldn't be all bad. As I learned more and more about teaching and learning, I came to cherish this state of affairs.

A situation that can accurately be described as "organized chaos" is one in which an outsider cannot see any specific pattern by which to describe the events transpiring.  However, the individual actors within the situation clearly understand what is happening. These individual actors are doing something that is organized and meaningful.  Of course, it's important to ask for whom meaning and structure are truly important, an actor within the event or an outsider.

If we briefly consider the nature of effective learning, it’s easy to recognize that learners must see meaning and purpose in what they are learning. Learners must recognize that they will gain something useful from the investment they make in the challenge of learning.

Why is it that young children recognize this fact so easily when they constantly ask “why?”  The reward for young children is easy to understand. It's the answer to the question that they want to know. It's simply unfortunate that as young children grow into older children and adolescents, they so often lose this inherent thirst for knowledge. Perhaps the reason is because typical school learning is not about answering personal questions, but rather, if any questions are answered at all, they have typically been imposed from on high.

Perhaps it's becoming obvious why I cherish a state of organized chaos in the classroom. In this state, rather than one common experience taking place, individuals or small groups are pursuing their own personal experiences. Learners are doing specific things because they find them important. People are to make their own decisions because they matter and their wishes are important. Young children are empowered to learn when they ask why. As educators, we must find ways to continuously empower all learners.

I am certainly not advocating that learners should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want. The term is organized chaos, not total chaos.

Many people, including me, would argue that it is very reasonable that, as a society, we would want to select some things that everybody should know. Those states that have adopted Common Core have made an explicit statement about a set of skills that the states believe all learners should possess. When individual states specify precise knowledge that learners should possess, they are doing the same thing. If all learning were dictated by states and local municipalities, there would be no chaos - it would all be organized.

In fact, for several decades, educational stakeholders believed that organized was the way to go. You could walk into a classroom and see the teacher standing in front of the room and students lined up in rows of desks. It was very organized and, for many students, very difficult to learn. In a society that stressed the importance of each individual, America's students were treated as members of groups, not individuals.

Certainly we are moving into an era of far more individualized learning. Students can access information in different ways. Students do not have to read, listen to, or watch the same content to learn the same facts. But I would argue that as educators we must pay attention to something else as well.

It's a generally accepted learning principle that people learn best by doing. Project-based learning is an important component of many successful classrooms today. Teachers are often celebrated when much active learning occurs in their classrooms. I would argue, however, that it is not a one-size-fits-all model.  Since individuals have varied interests and skills, one type of project may be very appropriate for one student and inappropriate for another. Different types of projects can have similar learning objectives, even though they are very different.

Ultimately, it is important to recognize that while the project is important as a vehicle for learning, it is the knowledge and skills that stem from the project, dictated by educational and/or political authorities, that are most important. Students will hopefully remember the knowledge and skills forever. They will undoubtedly forget the actual project. However, without a high quality project that fulfills the individual's needs, little will be learned.

Within a classroom that exemplifies organized chaos, different students are learning in different ways at the same time.  While other might not recognize what is happening, these learners will be on their way towards acquiring essential knowledge and skills, as defined by society.

Andrew Pass is the CEO of A Pass Educational Group and has done graduate work in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy at Michigan State University

An Instructor’s Content Wish List – the Rigorous and the Vigorous

By: Betsy Zobl Jagosz

Rigor is a prominent buzzword in education at the moment and Common Core Standards emphasize the need for rigorous content and learning. The emphasis on rigorous learning prevails in current conversations about education standards; a quick and dirty Google search on “rigor in education” returns more than 12 million results. The first page of hits is mostly journal articles with titles like “Characteristics of a Rigorous Classroom” and “Recognizing Rigor in Classrooms.” Clearly, rigor is all the rage.

Discussions of rigor tend to focus on the demanding nature of content, sometimes eliciting apprehensive visions of second graders learning about multivariables and sixth graders reading Ulysses. But the idea of rigor, alarmist extremes aside, is a good one –students must be given demanding, challenging content accompanied by high performance expectations. In all the conversation about creating rigorous content that challenges students, however, we don’t want to ignore the need for vigorous content as well.

Vigorous content is flexible and dynamic. Vigorous content doesn’t end with an answer; it ends with more questions and inspires reflective, evaluative student learning. It promotes real-world extrapolation and fosters critical thinking skills founded on rigorous content. Vigorous content can and should be demanding, but more than anything, it should propel the student beyond content. It gives the student an opportunity to build on the content after the student has written the paper and passed the exam.

An example from my classroom – students are reading a text set during the Afghan civil war. There is a great deal of Arabic vocabulary in the text, and students must be able to understand not just the literal meaning of Arabic words, but their meaning within an unfamiliar cultural context. The word tasbeh literally refers to prayer beads, but does tasbeh correlate to, for example, rosary? This is rigorous content, and by mastering the meanings of the unfamiliar words so that the vocabulary contributes to reading comprehension, students are responding to high performance expectations. At the end of the semester, though, what will they do with that new vocabulary? 

I invigorate and enhance the rigor of the text’s vocabulary by pushing students to project the idea of cultural nuances in vocabulary outside any one, in-class, text. Vigorous learning about vocabulary looks beyond individual words and their meanings and promotes vocabulary acquisition skills that have application across curricula and outside the classroom. Students learn about connotation vs. denotation and that the meaning of a word can shift depending on time and place. Content that teaches about language families encourages students to extrapolate the meaning of unfamiliar words based on common etymologies. This type of vigorous work with vocabulary guides students away from the dictionary and leads to an appreciation for the dynamic nature of language. Developing vocabulary acquisition skills is the vigorous counterpart to the rigor of learning demanding vocabulary words. 

Ideal educational content is both rigorous and vigorous. The challenge for content providers is in combining both. A rigorous biology text can have exquisitely detailed diagrams of body systems that give students the opportunity for in-depth exploration and understanding of how the body works. But a vigorously rigorous biology text could incorporate discussion of biomedical ethical issues beside those lovely diagrams, allowing students to locate the science of the body in the political and sociological domains. This discussion would provide students with multiple opportunities to think critically about issues like the integration of science and society and the grey areas that often surround conversations about ethics and morality. This reflective learning can take place in a safe, practice environment – the biology classroom – before students have to take their critical thinking skills on the road in the real world. 

By all means, let’s continue to prioritize rigor in our content and our classrooms. From an instructor's persepctive, we need to keep vigor at the top of the list as well. 

This post was written by guest blogger Betsy Zobl Jagosz. Betsy is the Director of Operations at A Pass Educational Group by day and English instructor at Oakland Community College by night.

Using Backward Design for Curriculum Planning

by: Ginger Bidell

One of the most challenging, and important, tasks facing teachers and instructional designers is curriculum planning. There is so much content. How do we decide what is most important and valuable for students to master?

Many people begin the planning process by developing lessons or reviewing textbooks first. Backward design, a curriculum planning approach introduced by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, challenges teachers and designers to begin their planning process by developing goals for student learning. 

The backward design approach helps teachers and designers to establish priorities for learning and avoid using the textbook as the curriculum instead of a resource. This approach includes three steps: identifying the desired results, determining acceptable evidence of learning, and developing the learning plan. 

Step one: Identifying the desired results, including developing learning objectives. 

This step involves reflecting on the standards and curriculum map to identify the key concepts that students should know and be able to understand at the end of the unit. It is also important to identify the skills, knowledge, and behaviors that students are expected to acquire during the unit. For example, in a technical writing unit, an objective might be for students to effectively write for various audiences to enable others to perform a task. 

Step two: Determining acceptable evidence of learning. 

Another important question that teachers and designers must answer is “how do we know whether or not students have achieved our learning objectives?” This step requires teachers to consider what will be acceptable evidence that students have met the objectives. What will students need to do to demonstrate that they can effectively write for various audiences to enable them to perform a task?

In our example, students may provide evidence that they have met the objective by writing directions that will enable their peers to perform a task, for example making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Once students have written the directions, their classmates can follow the directions to see if they are able to successfully make the sandwich.

Step three: Developing the learning plan. 

Once we know what students need to be able to know and do, what needs to happen in the classroom to support that goal? What will need to be taught? What might need to be coached? What types of scaffolding will students need to meet their goals? And finally, what materials and resources will students need to acquire the needed information? 

A learning plan that would enable students to meet our objective might include a number of different activities. Students may need to learn aspects of technical writing from the teacher or textbook. They may need to view and discuss examples of technical writing. They will also need opportunities to practice their technical writing skills and receive feedback. For example, students could write technical directions for a task. Their classmates could use the directions and attempt to complete the task. Then, those classmates can provide feedback to the writer to help them fill in missing steps or information. Students might also write directions for their parents and have their parents provide feedback. Every activity in the learning plan will support students’ mastery of the objective. 

So back to our original question; in all of the content and materials that we have at our disposal, how do we decide what is most important and valuable for students to master?

Using backward design to plan learning units and courses helps teachers and designers to reflect on what is really important for students to learn. Establishing objectives first enables them to prioritize learning activities so that students can successfully master learning goals.

Wiggins, J & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

This post was written by Ginger Bidell, A Pass Educational Group, LLC, February contractor of the month. 

Ginger Bidell is an instructional designer who provides faculty support for the development, design, and revision of online and hybrid courses and programs at SUNY Buffalo State. In addition, Ginger has worked as a freelance instructional designer for A Pass Educational Group for the past year. Prior to working as an instructional designer, Ginger taught history and English language arts at the elementary and secondary levels. Ginger earned both her Bachelor of Science in Childhood Education and Social Studies and Master of Science in Education from SUNY Buffalo State.

Talking Story: Sharing Experiences in a Hawaiian Classroom

In a Hawaiian classroom, one might hear an ELA teacher suggest some food for thought and then allow the students to “talk story” at their tables or perhaps as a whole-class discussion. A loose translation of “talk story” is simply “discuss amongst yourselves” or “chat freely,” and, if one has never seen this before, it might at first appear unorganized. But in practice, it is much more than just an unstructured discussion.

Talk story represents a style of learning quite different from traditional lectures and direct instruction. 

Talk story can certainly be used in conjunction with these methods but is based on the premise that students and teachers share and learn from each other as equals in the classroom community.

Talk story recognizes the value, legitimacy, and diversity of student voices. In a society as richly diverse as a Hawaiian classroom, students may be of Hawaiian, Tongan, Samoan, Micronesian, or Filipino descent or may have Chinese, Japanese, or European heritage. Students might speak English, Hawaiian, or Pidgin or other languages at home. Students might have their own room in their parents’ three-bedroom, single-family home or share a bed in their auntie’s three-generation home. In some cases, students may sleep in the great outdoors under lightweight tents at the beach—because they have no home.

Over time and with practice, my second and third grade students on the Leeward side of Oahu began to thrive in this process of a shared discourse, which was quite different from what they were used to in previous classrooms. We established community agreements consistent with those taught in Tribes Learning Communities: attentive listening, mutual respect, right to pass/right to participate, and appreciations. My students understood the importance of their own perspectives and those of everyone around them. All voices deserved to be heard; all experiences contributed to the way they, as students, would dig into and digest everything we read.

I used talk story in a number of different ways. In addition to class discussions of read alouds, I set up Literacy Lunches, during which a reading group would get to come eat lunch with me once a week, and we’d read and chat. They’d communicate openly about a book’s thematic relevance in their lives such as overcoming a challenge and finding courage like in Ramona the Brave. Often from these discourses, the students would collaboratively and organically come up with the next inquiry topic for a writing project or a recommendation for the next book for Literacy Lunch. Their engagement with each text was profound and personal. They grew confident in the knowledge that their contextualized understanding was valuable and created substantive learning for all of us. I began to use talk story beyond just subject matter learning. At the end of each day, my students established a community circle to share successes and appreciations. This process was not an instructor-led reward system, but rather a time for students to participate in reflecting on their experiences from the day or the week and to celebrate themselves and each other. 

Talk story in a classroom is not just an opportunity for students to respond to a prompt. It is an invitation to speak, to listen, to reflect, to engage, to appreciate, to learn. It is an acknowledgement that each person’s background can give us something new to experience and share. It is a celebration of children and their profound voices and of a centuries-old oral tradition of sharing culture through story. It is the understanding that our students’ stories are an evolving, amorphous doorway through which they enter the world of the classroom a little new and different every day. And it is the belief that we, as teachers, can learn as much from our students as they may learn from us.

This post was written by guest blogger, Shira Hillyer, English/language arts director at A Pass Educational Group, LLC.

Are You Caught in the Web? Best Practices for Internet Research

A common concern for all information professionals is getting research completed with as little anxiety as possible and as efficiently and accurately as possible. When an assignment comes up, the first thing that most of us have been trained to do is go straight to the Internet. That in itself is not a bad thing, especially if we have a good idea of what we are looking for. But what often happens, especially with an unfamiliar topic, is that we search for answers and find ourselves in a murky sea of sometimes useless, inaccurate, and badly designed Web sites. At the very least, we can’t tell the difference between reliable information, propaganda, and just plain junk. This causes confusion and even more anxiety, and lost productivity.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s plenty of good information on the Internet; you just have to know how to find it and how to avoid the sites that aren’t trustworthy. Remember, the Internet is getting more complicated every day, due in part to marketing efforts designed to fool the naïve user. Therefore, finding information requires some level of sophistication on the part of the researcher.

One thing I’d suggest is that you subscribe to a recognized, trustworthy general-reference service like Britannica.com and supplement it with free sites by respected organizations, such as NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress. Information from major publishers and government agencies is usually reliable.

Sites without marquee names may have good information as well, but they require some scrutiny. 

Here are some tips on what to look for:

Credentials. Are the authors of the site experts in the subject? Look for degrees, publications, and institutional affiliations. For example, a professor at a well-known university who has written a book about Chaucer is probably a good source on medieval literature.

Accuracy. A few minutes on a site should give you a sense of whether it’s generally reliable. Look up a subject you know something about and see what it says. Does the information coincide with your prior knowledge?

Point of View. Does the site promote a strident point of view? Is it heavily commercial? Because children may have trouble distinguishing fact from opinion, it’s usually best to stick with sites that strive for objectivity, at least for grade-school work.

Presentation, Navigation, and Design. If you are providing the site to a younger audience, is the site too scholarly for children? Not scholarly enough? Is it easy to navigate? Does it have a “child friendly” look and feel? These are questions you should ask to find the site that best suits your objectives.

Here are some examples of free sites that Britannica editors recommend, compiled and annotated by Britannica indexers.

Smithsonian Institution. The site has three large sections: Art & Design, History & Culture, and Science & Technology.

The Nobel Foundation. It’s easy to browse and has information on the prize awarders and the recipients as well as an interesting “Explore and Learn” section.

The Busch Entertainment Corporation Family of Parks. A good source for exploring the animal kingdom, with pictures, scientific classifications, fun facts, and bibliographies on many animal species.

PBS Online. With up-to-date features, the site has four large sections on general topics (Arts & Drama, History, Home & Hobbies, Life & Culture, and Science & Nature) and a section dedicated to News and Views.

Also, the Web has good sites for major sports associations and halls of fame with information on their specific sports. Examples include tennis, football, and baseball.

Universities are often an excellent source for reliable information. The University of Virginia, for example, maintains a large section on American Studies. Topics include the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition—odd for a Virginia school, perhaps, given that the fair took place in Chicago.

Renascence Editions of the University of Oregon has an extensive database of original texts of English literature.

The National Park Service offers a panorama of the American historical landscape, national parks, historic monuments, and landmarks.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an excellent source on space exploration and has a special section for younger students.

The Academy of Achievement has a good collection of contemporary biographies with sound and video clips, interviews, and photo galleries.

The Web Gallery of Art. This Hungarian site (in English) has an extensive, searchable database of high-resolution images of European paintings and sculptures from the 12th to the mid-19th century.

There are many others. Explore the Web and discover what’s there; just make sure to look carefully and teach your researchers and editors to do the same. Most of all, remember that there is much knowledge that can’t be found on the Internet, and for that your local library is still the best source, especially because your library will most likely subscribe to quality databases that are not free on the Internet. And libraries can almost always be accessed remotely. And speaking of the library, professional librarians are excellent guides on how to use and how not to use the Internet. See “The Librarian’s Guide to Great Web Sites for Kids” and “ALA’s Great Web Sites for Kids.”

It’s great to be able to take advantage of all of the information that is now available at our fingertips on the Web; but without some guidance the inexperienced researcher can get all tied up in knots. But being attentive to the pitfalls and the advantages of what is available online, and being mindful of what may or may not be trusted content, can help even the novice researcher untangle the Web.

This blog post was written by Michael Ross, senior vice president and general manager for education at Britannica, and board member of A Pass Educational Group, LLC. 

Adapted from a Britannica blog post, “Untangling the Web: A Student Guide to the Internet,” by Michael Ross, August 28, 2007

Learning with "the Other": A Visit to an Arab/Jewish School in Jerusalem

This past December, I had the opportunity to visit a very special school in Jerusalem, the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Jerusalem School. This school, which runs from kindergarten to twelfth grade, includes both Arab and Jewish children. Only an absolute optimist would consider the Arab and Jewish communities in Israel to be friends. Yet, in this one school, children from both communities learn together, hand in hand. 

The composition of this school is relatively straightforward. The administration, including both a Jewish and an Arab head, strives to include an equal number of Arab and Jewish children in each class. Each classroom includes both an Arab and a Jewish teacher. Hebrew and Arabic are spoken equally within the classroom. Students do not view their teachers as “the Arab teacher” and “the Jewish teacher.” Rather, they view them as “my teachers.” 

One idea struck me from the moment I walked into this school and continues as I think about my experiences two months later. As an outsider within the school, I could not distinguish between Arab and Jewish students. Instead of seeing students from a particular ethnic background, I saw younger children and older teenagers who came together as classmates and friends. 

Significantly, Arab and Jewish children attend the school for different reasons. According to our tour guide, many of the Arab students attend the school because it is the best educational opportunity to which they have access. Jewish students, on the other hand, attend the school because their parents value the concept of egalitarian education. Regardless of why students attend this school, they are there learning together. The concept of “otherness” that causes so much conflict in Israel and other parts of the world is eliminated in this school. The school truly becomes one inclusive community. 

It might be appropriate to ask why students learning together in a school are able to put their differences aside in order to develop a cohesive community. But the answer seems so obvious: It is much easier for children and teenagers to get over certain kinds of differences than it is for adults. They do not recognize ethnic and cultural differences. In our adult world, ethnic and cultural differences lead to war and death. 

The real question is, how can the world learn from children who overcome differences in order to form cohesive communities? How can adults use the knowledge, or perhaps naïvete, of children to make this a better world?

This post was written by Andrew Pass, founder and CEO at A Pass Educational Group, LLC.